


The Cleaner

by ismellitblue



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, Hurt John Watson, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Oblivious John Watson, Oblivious Sherlock Holmes, Other, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson Meet Differently, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, meeting AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22528762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ismellitblue/pseuds/ismellitblue
Summary: John Watson meets Sherlock Holmes through his job as a forensic cleaner, it takes them both a while to realize what that means.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 98





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Sherlock.

Life after the war…was empty.

John sat in his cramped bedsit and looked over everything.The bed was made,his one plate and his one mug were clean and packed away.He’d recently vacuumed and all his clothes had been ironed to perfection-even his jumpers had been laundered.

Inspection done he turned his attention to the table in front of him.His sig glinted in the artificial light,next to it the gun oil he’d used to make it reach such a state.He picked it up gently and placed it in his mouth,the cold steel turning warm as it leeched off his heat.The gun reached the back of his throat and John paused-not because of a gag reflex(months of the same procedure had rid him of that).And definitely not because he was trying to find a reason to live.

John Watson was trying to weigh the sum of his life.Was he his medical degree?Was he his military title?Did the blood and guts he’d held in during the war count?What about the lives he’d taken?Was he less of a human being because he’d been avoiding his sister?Did any of it matter?

_No_.

The answer was simple and straight to the point-a Watson answer.With a shrug,he brought his finger to the trigger,closed his eyes and counted.

_Five…four…three_ -A bang so loud it rattled the table made him lose his grip on the gun and it fell to the carpet with a soft thunk.

***

It was his neighbor.

John had only ever seen her in passing, and the two of them had given each other equally blank smiles.He watched her body being loaded up and caught a glimpse of her bedsit-it was as cold and bare as his was,the only difference between them being the spray of blood covering hers.

“Sir, please step back,”He moved out of the way quietly, but stood by his door as they wheeled her past.No one saw the salute he gave her-in a way it felt like they’d been fighting the same war.Only she’d counted from three and he’d gone from five.

Two seconds- and that made all the difference in the world.

***

He should have been ashamed of the dreamless sleep he had that night but he was too well rested to care.

When he walked into Ella’s office his limp was less pronounced .She noticed, of course,but didn’t say anything-waiting for him to bring it up-he didn’t.He didn’t say anything at all-what could he say…

_“A woman killed herself last night-I was two seconds behind her, and it felt like watching a comrade fall?”_ That would get him locked up faster than he could sneeze, so he kept quiet and just stared.By the end of the session,the limp was back full force and he almost didn’t want to move-but he did.

***

His bedsit was quiet(as usual), but next door there was noise…arguing.Putting his book down(he wasn’t even sure what he was reading )he got up,and headed over.

“This is bad for business,”It was the owners, and the woman-Mrs Hughes- looked irate.

“Oh relax,we’ll just paint over the mess,”Her husband offered and she threw a cushion at him.

“You idiot-this isn’t something paint will cover,her brains are on the ceiling!,”

“But those professional cleaners will cost us an arm and a leg,”Mr Hughes pointed out.

“A lawsuit will cost even more,”She hissed.

“Come on,love, you really think the people living here have money for lawsuits,”

***

John didn’t even remember her name, but as far as he was concerned she’d been a fellow fighter.She deserved more than to just be _that stain or that smell_ ,that no one liked but could never place.

“I’ll clean the place for half the price,”The arguing couple whirled, having been unaware of his presence.

“You’re the bloke from next door,”The wife said,somehow making it sound like an accusation, but John nodded nonetheless.

“Half price?You wouldn’t expect not to pay rent afterwards would you?”Her husband asked,squinting at John and the doctor shook his head.

***

Cleaning was a bit like surgery.There were gloves,a face mask and there were tools, and there was blood and guts.John scraped her brain off the ceiling,vaguely wondering what part he was holding, had he seen her uncovered body,he probably would have been able to guess.

The clean was a slow hard process, that used a lot of water and copious amounts of bleach.By the end of it John was sweaty and tired,but the place was spotless.The woman would be truly gone now,her memory not being degraded by someone thinking of her as nothing more than a stubborn stain.

The owners, upon seeing his work actually added an extra hundred on top of the agreed price.John accepted it quietly, and put the money away-what was he to do with it anyway?

***

Two days later,there was a knock at his door.And the sheer strangeness of it almost had John believing he’d finally gone bonkers and was hallucinating.He opened the door cautiously,half convinced he’d lost it.

Mr Hughes stood on the other side,looking uncertain.

“Um…so, that cleaning thing you did-would you mind doing it again?The people are willing to pay full price”John opened his mouth to decline,then instantly shut it.

Nothing ever happens to me, he’d posted.

_This_ , was something, so John nodded and two hours later he was in a house just outside London, scrubbing at walls with equipment he’d purchased that very day.The family’s teenage son had killed everyone and then turned the gun on himself.The only survivor was the sister,who’d been with friends and she didn’t want to set foot in the house in its current state.

John put on his gear and got to work, and if at the end of it, he wrote her a small note

_Hang in there, time won’t heal this, but it will help you remember the good times.Give yourself a chance._

No one but the girl would know and he hoped it would give her something to hang on to.

***

Things just steamrolled from there-he was affordable, he was efficient and he knew how to make people feel at ease.

He cleaned out the bathtub of an anorexic young man who’d been rotting there for two weeks before a neighbor checked out the smell.He picked up the remains of a little girl from her family’s backyard-crushed to death by her father’s scrap metal.There was also a woman(she unlike most of his cases wasn’t dead), but a machine at work had sliced off her legs, and he’d been called in to clean up the mess.

He gained a reputation, his former clients recommending him to other people.Those who liked to think themselves far removed from death were scared of him,and others disgusted,but the ones who needed his services understood-and more often than not,John Watson found himself on the receiving end of grateful hugs.

The longer he cleaned,the farther Afghanistan got, and he welcomed the distance.Captain Watson was tucked away,ready to be used should his skills ever be needed,but content to rest.Dr Watson took a backseat,providing commentary here and there and speculating causes of death and symptoms leading up to it as John worked.

John Watson was a cleaner now.

The calm that came after the storm,and gave you a clean place to cry.


	2. Chapter 2

In his few months on the job,John had gotten used to handling suicides-they were almost always messy,and he tended to get right to it instead of lingering.But something about the apartment he was in was…off.

He looked down at the blood stain on the bed,it was the size of his palm,but experience told him there’d be more blood beneath it.He cut into it,flipped it over and paused-there was no blood-it was almost as though someone had dripped blood onto the surface,to make it look like the victim had been lying there when they died.

_Oh_.

With steady fingers John put the mattress back down,went outside,took off his gloves and called the police.

He argued for a long time with the man on the other end, the bloke insisted that the police had already done their job there, and kept condescendingly asking if John thought his skills as a glorified broomstick made him an expert on crime scenes.

By the time he finally agreed to send someone over,bits of CaptainWatson were bubbling up to the surface.He ended the call without a thank you, letting his disapproval of the man’s conduct be known.

***

When the police finally did come,there was only two of them-a silver-haired man,who looked like he could use a cuppa or a pint-whichever threw itself at him first and posh bloke who walked in like he owned the place.

The latter didn’t even spare him a glance,he simply waltzed in and pulled out a magnifying glass.

“Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade”The silver haired man said,extending a hand.John grasped it,but before he could speak, the other occupant of the room spoke up.

“Graham, the idiocy of your department is unparalleled just how did they rule this as a suicide,”The curly haired man(how much product was in his hair?) went down on his hands and knees, observing something only he could see.

“So the cleaner’s right?”DI Lestrade asked.

“Of course he’s right look at the blood spatter, this was sprayed on-and he’s not a cleaner-he’s a doctor,”The man stood then, and John found himself pinned down by intense blue grey eyes.

“How did you-”Before he could finish the stranger was already talking.

“Please, it’s right there-you’re here to clean,but you’ve scrubbed up like a doctor,and not just any doctor-a surgeon,”The man advanced further, invading John’s personal space, and John squared his shoulders tilting his head to look up at him, not backing down an inch.

“Oh,”The man threw his head back, and something that looked almost like surprise passed lightning fast over his face.

“Not just a doctor, a soldier too,”

“I’m not a soldier anymore,or a doctor, I’m just John Watson now,”His leg chose that moment to give out and he leaned against a wall,grabbing the cane he’d rested there.The man’s unnerving eyes tracked the movement.

“Invalidated home , gunshot wound,but not on the leg, left shoulder-nerve damage,couldn’t be a surgeon anymore after that could you.But why a cleaner though?You could have continued to practice, maybe take on work at a local clinic, and spent your days diagnosing the flu,”John’s left hand spasmed, and he didn’t bother hiding the slight tremor.

“Sherlock, _enough_ ,”The DI sounded more resigned than angry.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”Sherlock asked, and John once again sought the man’s gaze.Whatever trick he was playing was cruel, and John could take people thinking he was heartless for making a living off the dead,he could deal with the pitying looks from Harry, and little old ladies who refused to take his seat on public transport…but to be viciously laid into for fun- _that_ , John could not stand.

Only, when he looked into the man’s eyes,there was no malice there-only curiosity.As though the man genuinely wanted to know if he was right, and he’d blurted out John’s dirty laundry without actually meaning any harm.

“Brilliant, absolutely amazing-how did you do that?”John said instead of a reprimand,and was shocked to find that he meant it.He smiled up at the man(his first true smile in ages), and he almost got one in return before the other man killed it, his face going blank.

His phone rang soon after, ruining the moment, and John accepted another cleaning job on the other side of London.He left just as more police cars were coming in, and for a moment he could have sworn the posh detective was looking down at him as he walked away.


	3. Chapter 3

_Amazing…Brilliant_.

The words rattled around in Sherlock’s brain and for the first time in his life he struggled to place them.They didn’t fit in the mind palace.Not in the crystals of the chandeliers, not in the individual threads of the lush carpets and not even among the book pages.

When had someone ever said that to him without being sarcastic or looking at him like he was the key to their nobel prize?

He tried to cram the words and the feelings they brought into the windows, but they refused.And for the first time in his life,Sherlock found himself building a room in his mind palace without having intended to do so in the first place.

The room was bare,completely void, and yet when he whispered the words, it instantly became the warmest place in his palace.Sunlight streamed in through the windows and he found himself just lying on the floor,letting the rays dance across his skin.

Hours later, he emerged from the palace feeling like he’d just solved a level nine case-he even let Mrs Hudson force him into eating a whole slice of pie,and when she suggested he take some biscuits and tea as well, he indulged her.

***

His charitable mood didn’t last-of course it didn’t – it couldn’t,that wasn’t how he was wired.But the new room stayed, and when he rearranged the hallways,pushing it to the very back, it still made itself known.Bits of warm light stealing into his other memories _corrupting_ him.

He couldn’t let such a thing stand, and there was only one way to rid himself of it.He had to meet with the doctor again, human beings were predictable right down to their ability to constantly disappoint him.

A few extra minutes in the short man’s company and Sherlock was certain his palace would once again go back to its overcast skies and brittle cold,with only artificial light filling the halls.

***

To be honest John had never expected to see Sherlock Holmes,the world’s only consulting detective at least according to his website, again.But three weeks after their brief encounter,he ran into him(literally) at Tesco of all places.

“Oh,sorry I-Sherlock?”The tall man looked down at him,still dressed to the nines and still spotting his crazy curls.

“Hello John, fancy seeing you here, I was just…shopping, as people do”At that John looked down at the other man’s basket.It held a cucumber, three different types of milk, and lube.Deciding he really didn’t want to know,John looked back up, the tips of Sherlock’s ears burning.

“I see that,”Then the two of them just stood there, looking, until John broke eye contact to try and straighten his oatmeal jumper(it was one of his favourites).

“You’ve just had a difficult clean, a gruesome one, children were involved, and you cried as you worked”Sherlock looked as though he hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but he just stood there, his eyes going hard,like he was waiting for John to hit him.

“Yeah, I did, how did you know?Another one of your amazing deductions?”A sneer overcame Sherlock’s features, and the man took a menacing step forward.Next thing John knew,he was holding Sherlock’s weird shopping basket,watching in confusion as the man ran away at full speed, his coat billowing behind him.

 _What_?

Taking the cucumber and the full cream milk from Sherlock’s basket,he added them to his own.He’d been surviving on bread and tea for too long.Maybe it was time he started experimenting with food again.

With a decisive nod,he made his way to the fruit aisle-it had been too long since he’d done something just for the fun of it.  
***

 _Wrong_! _Wrong_!

The encounter had not gone as Sherlock had planned…at all.

John Watson no longer had a room in the mind palace-he had an entire wing.The only other person who had that was Mycroft,and that was only because Sherlock’d had difficulty containing the man’s massive ego.

What had gone wrong?Sherlock had planned it perfectly,he’d spent days tailing the man,memorizing his movements,observing his none existent social life,then he’d taken the last week to plan exactly how they should meet.

But John was slippery, he’d wiggled his way out of Sherlock’s plan with a kind smile,those warm eyes of his, and by uttering another ‘ _amazing’_ ,like he didn’t know what that did to Sherlock.

Pulling his dressing gown tighter,he stood,then fell back on the sofa.

What was he going to do?


End file.
